It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look.....To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry Thoreau

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Dylan is 17 today!

There....I said it.This is another tough birthday for me.Somehow turning 17 volts you from the *child* stage to the *graduation, college and many other adult-type activities are looming just a year from now* stage :).Ahhhh-- wasn't he just dressing up in his Robin Hood costume and shooting plastic arrows just a while back? Sitting at the piano in Sweden in his blanket sleeper singing his heart out a few years ago? ( He was only a year old!) Riding in the wagon with next brother Noah ( and people asking if they were twins) ?I refuse to say * time flies* because I know it is such a cliche ( but I said it anyway, didn't I? :)

My daughter's blog

Someone who has a why can live with any what and any how.Viktor Frankl

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

George Bernard Shaw

And it is this humanity of Jesus that makes visible what is divine in him, which makes him manifest to us as God. Frenzy of any kind - even if it is 'religious' zeal and frenzy - is totally alien to the man of the New Testament. Think about it: Every time that we believe we are absolutely indispensable, every time we think that the world and the Church depend on our tireless activity, we over-value ourselves.

It is not that I wish to sing the praises of laziness, but I do wish tosuggest a certain change in the table of virtues as it has evolved in theWestern world, for which only action counts as a legitimate and conceivableactivity - whereas meditation, wonder, self-communion and silence are seento be indefensible and worthless, or at the very least, 'activities' thatneed to be justified.